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Dems ramble on about dismal failure in legislative races. (Monty must not fact check this crap.)

In an article entitled “S.D. Democrats grasp for elusive path to gains” by David Montgomery this morning in the Argus Leader, I almost had to take some pepto bismol after reading all three pages of the most nauseating pablum I’ve read yet this election.

The spin is so bad, it’s giving people motion sickness:

After losing 14 seats in a GOP landslide in 2010, Democrats were waging an unprecedentedly aggressive and coordinated campaign to win them back. Republicans across the region were hit by punchy, professionally designed postcards with synchronized messages, criticizing them for their votes for budget cuts and the bills that became the unsuccessful Referred Laws 14 and 16.

For the most part, these ” punchy, professionally designed postcards with synchronized messages” were awful, and some of the worst kind of hack. As an example…..

Professional? This postcard does a poor job of using white space, and even went out with a glaring error on it (This November 6th, This November 6th….). Sorry, but it’s awful, and looks like it was done in-house by an intern. And then was approved by another one.

Moving on….

The state Democratic Party this year played a central role in legislative campaigns, essentially serving as campaign manager and support staff for any lawmaker who wanted it. The party designed and distributed political postcards around the state on behalf of candidates, instead of a more traditional arrangement where candidates and the party run separate mail campaigns.

and..

Republicans saw things differently. They complained about a Democratic campaign they saw as negative, personal, and sometimes inaccurate or misleading.

and…

?If that were the case, why did (Sen.) Mark Johnston win after (the state GOP) just attacked and attacked and attacked (Democratic nominee) Kent Alberty?? Nesselhuf said. ?If they felt that way, they wouldn?t use the same tactics.?

Is he kidding? “just attacked and attacked and attacked Kent Alberty?”Here’s where Monty needs to be scolded for not even bothering to do any fact checking. I have it on good authority that, one postcard was mailed against Alberty. But this was after he’d sent out at least SIX separate postcards against Mark Johnston.

“Attacked, and attacked, and attacked?” Ben must have been only channeling himself when he came up with that one.

And then was this comment from the legislator who set the gold standard for being ineffective:

Kloucek said his own failings contributed to his loss after 22 consecutive years of service.

?My opponent did not win, I lost it,? Kloucek said. ?I played defense and started answering his negative charges … instead of promoting my own agenda and campaign as I had intended. Once I switched to defense, it was downhill from there.?

Well, Frank, I’ll agree to a point. You do have failings.

Frank’s opponent wiped the floor with him, and beat him like a rented mule in this race. “Frankly,” it was a combination of factors. Bill Van Gerpen worked harder than any opponent had ever worked to date in challenging Kloucek, and ran a positive, issues oriented race.

If there was anything negative, it might have been that Frank has managed to be there 22 years, and has produced almost next to nothing. I did hear that his extended longevity had been brought up very simply by the challenger being in favor of term limits. Frank has never produced anything except aggressive campaigning, and district had finally tired of him.

It wasn’t handed to Van Gerpen – he earned it, and I doubt Frank will take him on again.

Now, in the article – I was glad to hear one thing from the Democrats:

Nesselhuf?s term as party chairman runs through December 2014, and he said he intends to fill out his term. He said that while the party may tinker its approach for the 2014 election, it largely will stay the course.

52 thoughts on “Dems ramble on about dismal failure in legislative races. (Monty must not fact check this crap.)”

Nesselhuf is a complete idiot. He needs to be fired. That’s what’s wrong with Democrats. We let idiots ruin things and there’s no consequence! Nesselhuf must be fired before we lose everything in 2014.

Nesselhuf is afraid of losing his job. He has been the worst Dem leader in a long time. He’s worse than 2010 because that was a wave. Right now he’s trying to circle the wagons because he knows he can’t run for statewide office again after his disastrous run for SOS and now his disastrous strategy of running the party.

I talked to a well respected Democrat States Attorney last week and he blasted Nesselhuf to me. He said Nesselhuf has to go. It’s one of the worst legislative campaigns in the history of legislative campaigns.

I would say it’s time for Ben to go. Clearly the negative personal attack ads had the opposite effect he intended them to have. Also he made all of his candidates look childish and desperate with the mailers that were sent out. I think there were actually some quality people running on the Democratic side this year, but they made the mistake of letting the SDDP get involved, thus costing some their chance at winning.

(1) You Republicans are saying that negative personal attack ads are bad, that you would never run them, and that instead you will always run positive, issues-oriented campaigns, right? You are thus saying that Kristi Noem’s campaign, although successful, made a poor choice in going negative on Matt Varilek from the get-go, right?

(2) Kloucek produced “next to nothing” in his 22 years. Yet you embrace a Congresswoman whose record is similarly empty and who lacks the ambition to hang onto a leadership position. Buy, you must surely not want to wait 22 years to get rid of her.

Boy those grapes are really sour! Clueless Kloucek is just a damned fool who is an anachronism. He belongs back in the last century when you walked around and handed out rulers and fly swatters to uniformed rural folks and got elected. People are better informed now. And you can’t say Kloucek “never had a chance” or we are just “picking on Kloucek.” The people gave him 22 years worth of rope and that was enough for him to hang himself with it. Good riddance!

Rumor is he didn’t campaign hard and was still the top vote getter in all the SD contested House races.

The same cannot be said of the 3-way Conzet-Gosch-Swanson race, or the Hickey-Hawks-Deelstra race, which were both in heavy (R) districts. Conzet & Gosch barely won, and Hawks (D) did in fact beat Deelstra and came close to beating incumbent Hickey.

That is flat out not true. Stace is a good guy but Stace has a personal vendetta against many of them and I would caution anyone who is newly elected to keep there distance in any fights Stace has already started.

All of you conservative Republicans can praise Ben Nesselhuf’s leadership but the real fact is that he failed. He acted as Chairman and Executive Director this cycle. Not only did he go for a total take over of the party but he also paid himself to do a job that was once volunteer in nature. He is a magalomaniac. He needs to go and now!!!!!!!!!!! My party is being destroyed and if we are going to recruit people like Stephanie Herseth Sandlin or Brendan Johnson to run for office we have to do better. This leadership team is absolutely the low point of our party and in a year where we were reminded how George McGovern won in SD we see Ben Nesselhuf destroy a good image. Shame on Ben Nesselhuf and his team.

What is your methodology on thinking it is 33%? Is it 90% of their registration? I define that as the floor since usually 90% of Republicans and Democrats stay home most elections. (Sidenote: State Senate Dem’s got 36% of the Senate votes and State House Dem’s got 37% of the House votes. Which means Republicans and Independents voted almost 100% for the Republicans.)

I guess I think starting at the floor is where I like to begin because everything between the floor and the 40% conclusion you came to is soft support. (whether that is 25% or 35% is up to you)

Whalen and Lien garnered the hardcore supporters of the party (GOP). Curt Hohn (D) did also in ’96 against Thune. But how do you go about keeping a certain amount of soft support to stay home when the candidate is weak like Varilek was? I guess the approach Varilek took was to make Noem unacceptable to them. (He did a good job of that and maybe even another 5% felt Noem didn’t do a good job but certainly weren’t going to throw a vote to the totally unacceptable Varilek.)

I’m also thinking 2012 could have been a landslide win for Noem. It wasn’t a landslide even though it was solid. She easily could have won 65-70% of the vote had they not ran such an aggressive campaign against her character. Now Varilek will fade away but the impression a fairly sizable group of voters have of Noem will persist.

The fact that Varilek held Noem to 57% is a strong campaign for someone totally unelectable in SD.

All I’m saying is the fact that Varilek held the soft D’s and Dem leaning I’s in the D column for the next cycle. Making it simpler for a Brendan Johnson to win over the soft Noem supporters rather than have to win back the soft D supporters aswell.

(I should not I am not impressed at all by the campaign the Noem team ran. Kristi Noem has many strengths and while she might have won by a solid margin they did not do a good job of protecting her from vicious attacks against her character. Those will come back to bite her some day)

Also Noem showed signs of weakness in many of the larger urban counties on the east side of the state. Winning Minnehaha by 2,000 votes is not a good campaign at all. Especially considering her organization is headquartered in SF.

Really, Bert?? What are your sources for this? Everything that I’ve seen says that he was born in Miami in 1971. I did note one source that incorrectly said that Sen. Rubio wasn’t a natural born citizen because his father didn’t naturalize until 1975, but that is irrelevant according to the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States . . ..” In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court verified this interpretation in the 1898 case of U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, holding that a child born of two Chinese Citizens while in this country WAS a citizen. So, what are your sources for this claim that Sen. Rubio isn’t a natural born citizen?

I should pull the word “incorrectly” from the third sentence above. I mean that the source was incorrect regarding the law in this issue, not incorrect about the citizenship status of Sen. Rubio’s father.

In light of the immigration debate over the past few years, I would say the sources are Fox News, Donald Trump, and the dominant right wing of the Republican Party.

They have continuously shown a revisionist attitude in their interpretation of the 14th Amendment.

Boy, the Republicans sure started something. You remember the good ole’ days when a guy from Mexico (George Romney) or a guy from Panama (John McCain) could run for President and no one would question their citizenship?

Like the Republican 22nd Amendment which prevented Republican Presidents like Eisenhower and Reagan from being elected to a third term, or the SD 2004 “Daschle Bill” which will prevent Thune from running for the US Senate and the Presidency under the same SD ballot in 2016, the Republicans have created a political environment where Rubio cannot run for President in 2016…. imagine that…..

rand paul and Thune would be left at the sidewalk send your best against Hillary she already has 242 electoral votes, and will take all your self deportation you can muster .puts her at 267 only need a new hampshire see ya in 2016.

I think that by 2016 it will be somewhat of an easy pickup to win the presidency I think Rand Paul and John Thune would both be able to win. So we need to make sure we nominate the best man for the job.